A key group of Democratic senators has introduced a bill to increase funding for the federal Legal Services Corp. (LSC) and to lift many of the restrictions on LSC-funded attorneys, such as the prohibition on the filing of class actions and the collection of attorney fees.
When I was a law student intern and then a Legal Services staff attorney (1977-1978) law reform and challenges to government were the animating spirit of the civil legal services for the poor programs that grew out of President Johnson's War on Poverty. The Manhattan anti-poverty agency Mobilization For Youth gave birth in 1964 to MFY Legal Services on the Lower East Side. MFY and CRLA - California Rural Legal Assistance - founded 40 years ago - were our icons.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1966 embraced the cause and leadership of Cesar Chavez, the Catholic Worker movement leader of the proto-union then called the United Farmworkers Organizing Comittee which led the national boycott of non-union grapes.
California Rural Legal Assistance earned the animosity of then-Governor Ronald Reagan by taking on the cause of farmworkers in California's Central Valley. CRLA was in fact an ally of the workers whom the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee sought to unionize. The migrant workers - largely Chicano, Mexican, and Philippino - tended and harvested the fruit and vegetables that feed us all. They had been lionized by Woody Guthrie in Pastures of Plenty.
Ronald Reagan's attack on Legal Services as Governor helped make him an icon for some - but anathema to us. When as President he nationalized the assault, cutting funds, we mobilized in New Jersey. With the encouragement of Stanley Van Ness, the Public Defender of New Jersey - my classmates at Rutgers Law School - Louise Halper, Al Donnarumma and I - initiated Public Interest Lawyers of New Jersey. We organized a lawyer's petition drive, and rallied allies to Save Legal Services. We had some effect but restrictions mounted, funds were cut, and persons hostile to Legal Services were appointed to its Board by the President.
It was the beginning of a long fight in which abolition of Legal Services - like tort reform - became a ritual cry for some. The result was attrition - less money, prohibition of class-action litigation, and barring Legal Services from receiving counsel fee awards even when they prevailed in civil rights cases.
The threat to the proram was mitigated by development of the Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts device, which has drawn the strong support of bar associations and courts. It has long been a centerpiece of the Canons of Ethics that lawyers have an obligation to provide legal assistance to those who cannot afford it. Today the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct in R. 6.1 calls upon lawyers to devote 50 hours per year of pro bono publico legal activity, and to "voluntarily contribute financial support to organizations that provide legal services to persons of limited means".
Now the economic crisis which has greatly increased the need for legal services for the poor has also further impoverished Legal Services - dependent as it is on interest on lawyers' now bare trust accounts as the home sales that provided the transient balances have plummeted.
Removal of the restrictions on forms of practice and removing the bar on seeking counsel fees as Senator Harkin's bill proposes are thus key to saving Legal Services.
p.s. - it is a great source of pride that my mother Clare M. Conk has for 25 years been a member of the Board of CRLA.
No comments:
Post a Comment